The revelations that 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow had huge conflicts of interest, shielded the Bush administration from harsh criticism, and spoke numerous times with Karl Rove have all been receiving coverage, as they should.

But another important story which has been overlooked is the statement by a 9/11 Commissioner that all of the 9/11 Commission staff had a conflict of interest.

This is important because many people have assumed that -- even if Zelikow and the Commissioners had conflicts of interest -- the staff would at least do a thorough and unbiased job in investigating what happened on 9/11. We now know this is not true.

Indeed, Lehman strongly implies that the Commission was purposely set up so that every single person involved would have a conflict of interest which would prevent them from conducting an honest investigation.

Lehman himself is a textbook example of conflict of interest. In 1998, 9/11 Commission executive director Zelikow published an article in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, entitled Catastrophic Terrorism: Imagining the Transformative Event. Some two years later, PNAC picked up the Zelikow language, saying that the campaign to convince the public to allow expanded use of U.S. military force around the world "is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor". Lehman was a member of PNAC, and a signatory to PNAC's plea for "a new Pearl Harbor". See this video and this essay.

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When taken with other facts undermining the Commission's credibility (and see this), Lehman's revelation should completely destroy the idea that there has been any real investigation into 9/11.

As a political activist for decades, I have rejoiced in victories for the people and mourned in defeats. I chose the pen name "George Washington" because - as Washington's biographies show - he wasn't a (more...)